You are here

Announcements

All Kickstarter Backers: Please go to your Kickstarter account and update your emails.
We're trying to give you as much time as possible for the staged rollout of pre-Alpha.
Make sure you can log in, and make sure your email address is up to date.
Please make sure *@missingworldsmedia.com is set to Allowed or Not Junk in your email settings.

Secret World: Legends

It has been mentioned several times in these forums by players and developers alike how immersive The Secret World is and how good the questing system is from a game design perspective.

The Secret World will be rebooting shortly as a Free-to-Play version known as Secret World Legends. No characters can be imported from The Secret World legacy servers since the two games are incompatible. So all characters will be new and start at level 1. This is an excellent opportunity to start playing it with friends all of the same level and discover it together.

If anyone else would like to give it a try and/or start over again from the beginning, please post here and we will figure out how to get together in game. I would actually like to form a Cabal (a.k.a guild) with others who are also supporting or are interested in playing City of Titans.

When you post, please let us know in which game faction you would prefer to start: Illuminati (New York), Templar(London) or Dragon(Seoul). If we get enough people willing to play in the same faction it will make playing together and starting a Cabal that much easier. If you don't care which faction, or are dead set against a faction, please state so as well.

For the record, I don't really care which faction I start in.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Interesting... Very tempting. I never did get around to joining The Secret World.

I have a couple days to think about it. This computer is not really set up for gaming, so it might not be possible to play until I return to Ohio next month. If I decide to give it a whirl, and if this computer can handle the load, I would probably start as a Dragon. I've spent my entire adult life in Asia, no sense in breaking the routine now.

Preloading is now available.
Still haven't been able to see f I have anything to pass forward from the other game - their accounts/... link leads me to a 403 error page.

That wasn't enabled until 1400 Eastern, so it's good to go now. I literally just completed the transfer, although I haven't downloaded the game yet, mostly due to concurrent downloads from the Steam Summer Sale... >.> <.<

I would love to join you guys. I used to play TSW, and tried twice to go back to it but it became sort of a lonely game, and I don't do well with zombies and other creatures by myself haha. Anyway, I used to play Templar and would happily do that again if I have a guild.

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Hmm, something just popped into my head. Unless I remember completely wrong or they changed with Legends we all don't need to be in the same faction to form a cabal, do we?

I did some research, and while it looks like a Cabal can not be cross-faction, there are cross-faction cabals that exist by joining single-faction Cabals via a customized cross-faction chat channel.

It still might be a while until I am rank 2 in my faction, which is what you need to be to create a Cabal. So if anyone else can create one, let us all know. I'll check this thread before I do. I was thinking "We are Titans" perhaps or something similarly appropriate to City of Titans or Missing Worlds.

Edit: I just saw that link above and someone in that thread seems to think we actually will be able to form cross faction cabals. I guess we won't know until we try.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Maybe 'Missing Worlds Medium' or 'Missing Worlds Mediums' as the Cabal name, as 'medium' is the single noun for 'media'? And it's a double entendre because 'medium' can also be defined as a conduit for the spirit world.

They simplified the avatars too. All presets. No sliders. Although the clothing doesn't seem to have changed.

I noticed this too. I couldn't find the face that I had used in TSW, but I found something reasonably close. My wife is downloading the game, so I only watched the beginning intro and haven't played through the whole tutorial yet. From what I have seen thus far, which obviously isn't much, they changed the intro. No spoilers, but after Four Days Ago, it's different from the TSW one.

I played through the tutorial and I am NOT digging the new control scheme. It's like DCUO only worse. Very unintuitive.

I re-mapped all my hot keys to make it more intuitive for me. You might want to do the same. Since the game only uses 7 abilities on your hotbar (if you include your gadget), that leaves a lot of keys for other things like enabling your mouse cursor or other such.

Rigel wrote:

They simplified the avatars, too. All presets. No sliders. Although, the clothing doesn't seem to have changed.

Actually, the most recent version of the character creator in TSW didn't have sliders either.

I created a character just this week in it, and I was only able to select between discrete choices. But the difference I do notice is that in Secret World Legends, we have less choices. There are no eye, nose, and jaw and mouth choices for us like there were in TSW, instead we have just a head and a face choice. Granted there are like 30 heads and 15 faces for each head, so the combinations are pretty plentiful, but you can no longer get the same number of face combinations we had before.

I haven't been to the barber shop yet, so I don't know what other options await us for a fee.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Rigel wrote:
I played through the tutorial and I am NOT digging the new control scheme. It's like DCUO only worse. Very unintuitive.
I re-mapped all my hot keys to make it more intuitive for me. You might want to do the same. Since the game only uses 7 abilities on your hotbar (if you include your gadget), that leaves a lot of keys for other things like enabling your mouse cursor or other such.
Rigel wrote:
They simplified the avatars, too. All presets. No sliders. Although, the clothing doesn't seem to have changed.
Actually, the most recent version of the character creator in TSW didn't have sliders either.
I created a character just this week in it, and I was only able to select between discrete choices. But the difference I do notice is that in Secret World Legends, we have less choices. There are no nose, and jaw and mouth choices for us like there were in TSW, instead we have just a head and a face choice. Granted there are like 30 of each, so the combinations are pretty plentiful, but you can no longer get the same number of face combinations we had before.
I haven't been to the barber shop yet, so I don't know what other options await us for a fee.

Ah. Now that you mention it I don't recall any sliders in TSW. I guess all the talk about sliders here caused me to misremember. You're right, though, there were many more choices in the original game.
All I've done, so far, is the tutorial. I'll look into remapping the keys to something better.
I rerolled as a Dragon and the second playthough wasn't so bad.
I guess, as with most games, it'll take a while for muscle memory to develop. Especially in a game where I already have ideas about how to do stuff.
The fixed camera is a little annoying too. I keep trying to zoom in and out to narrow/widen my field of view.

Yeah, for me, the hardest part is trying to click things on the screen UI when I don't have a mouse cursor, so I end up pointing the camera way up to the right or something like that before I realize I need to disengage my mouse from the camera and enable the cursor. After some time it does become muscle memory like you say, and I anticipate it won't be an issue anymore. But I've also key-mapped mission turn-ins to a hot key so there's nothing I can't do with just a single keystroke now.

That means that I almost never have to enable my mouse cursor except to access my inventory, but accessing my inventory automatically calls up my mouse cursor anyways, so it's pretty seamless for me.

For MWM devs, there is definitely a lesson to be learned here about this type of control scheme. The less back and forth we have to do between camera and cursor the better. Try to make everything we need the cursor for capable of being keymapped. And bring up the cursor automatically when we call up a pop-up window that requires cursor input, like inventory, or map.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Sorry for the Double-Post, but this is a completely different subject:

Get a free limited-edition weapon in Secret World: Legends by completing this puzzle on MMORPG.com.

I've gotten the first four answers and they were not easy, so if you need any hints, PM me in this forum and I can help. I promise not to post the answers or give the answers away to anyone who doesn't want them.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

If you are in another faction, could you see if you can join it? Also, there may be a level requirement. I had to be lvl 10 to create it.

If anyone wants to create a cabal in another faction, we can still get on the same chat channel and I'll look to open a discord channel for us, no matter which faction you choose. Once we go to Kingsmouth Town, I don't see any reason why we can't all run together even if we're not in the same factions.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Dark Ether wrote:
For which faction?
That Cabal is Dragon.
If you are in another faction, could you see if you can join it? Also, there may be a level requirement. I had to be lvl 10 to create it.
If anyone wants to create a cabal in another faction, we can still get on the same chat channel and I'll look to open a discord channel for us, no matter which faction you choose. Once we go to Kingsmouth Town, I don't see any reason why we can't all run together even if we're not in the same factions.

Ok in that case Ill do Templar. And how long did it take you to get to level 10?

Dark Ether wrote:
For which faction?
That Cabal is Dragon.
If you are in another faction, could you see if you can join it? Also, there may be a level requirement. I had to be lvl 10 to create it.
If anyone wants to create a cabal in another faction, we can still get on the same chat channel and I'll look to open a discord channel for us, no matter which faction you choose. Once we go to Kingsmouth Town, I don't see any reason why we can't all run together even if we're not in the same factions.

First character is a Dragon. Nickname is DarkEther if you need to use that to invite or something. I'm level 15-ish or so I think.

All my perks finally caught up with me through the lag time, so I have 2 more character slots - I'll do one of each to have the bases covered.

Edit: managed to get that MMORPG puzzle worked through to the current stage where we're waiting on more people so the next step unlocks.

Please continue to use these CoT forums for discussions germane to CoT or to bring up topics of conversation that might be of interest to our community as a whole. But I ask that we use the TSW forums for topics relating to The Secret World and Secret World: Legend

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

So, is that the same account you use to play the game (in which case I have a problem) or do you need a separate account (in which case I need to know what they mean by "key" and where to get one...

Not quite sure what you're asking, so I'll try to answer your question in the different ways I think you may have meant it.

1. To use the Secret World Forums, you have to create a forum account. It is not linked to the account that has the game key. I think it is a security issue.
2. To play Secret World: Legend right now, I believe you have to have either been part of the Beta or have an existing The Secret World game account. We are in the early start period at this time, and it came upon us as a bit of a surprise. They allowed us to load the game early, but then allowed us to start playing as soon as we loaded it. So here we are. The game goes officially public on the 26th I believe. And it will be free to play and you won't need to have ever played TSW original.

I hope one of these answers your question.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I followed your link, and then the link for setting up a new forums account, where I can log on with an existing account (trying the same account I set up to download the game doesn't work) or "If you have a key and are a new Funcom customer, use it here to create an account."

BTW, my roommate (never played TSW, AFAIK) is playing right now as I download the game.

I followed your link, and then the link for setting up a new forums account, where I can log on with an existing account (trying the same account I set up to download the game doesn't work) or "If you have a key and are a new Funcom customer, use it here to create an account."

You can still read the forums, right? you just can't post?
No problem. Once you download the game and get in, just start playing. I'm sure you'll be able to access the forums then. If not, I would contact Funcom customer service and read the FAQs.

You can send me a PM here and I can send you the discord link for voicechat. That goes for everyone who wants to join.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

The original TSW involved a game key code to register with your account, like many games made in that era. Even if you purchased it off Steam, you would get an electronic copy of the game key code to put in. As it's F2P now, it shouldn't be required but I haven't had to make an account since I just logged into my old one and transferred it over.

They just extended the downtime for another 2 hours - something must have really, really screwed up. Perhaps more beta testing would have helped, as well as not deciding to open up "early access" to everyone instead of TWS subs and testers.

They just extended the downtime for another 2 hours - something must have really, really screwed up. Perhaps more beta testing would have helped, as well as not deciding to open up "early access" to everyone instead of TWS subs and testers.

Basically, there was a bug in their currency market, allowing people to buy system-generated currency low and sell it high, ad infinitum; to the point that anyone could make money hand over fist without risk with only the smallest initial investment.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

They have handled this launch very poorly imo. They don't even have a forum area set up for the game, and have been locking SWL discussions on the TSW forums.

There is a lot of stuff that can be learned here, least of which is having your customer service people all in and up to speed. I filed two requests on day one, once in the early morning, for issues I was having, and have not had any response beyond the automated one.

I find it hard to believe they didn't have people testing the market during their beta - that seems as if would be a must.

I would not be surprised if they do a total wipe of everything and start everyone off back at square one.

At this point, a wipe might be necessary. Reading the /reddit comments are a good way to pass the time. It reminds me of the forum comments from CoH/V when the servers would go down for something unscheduled and people would gripe and complain about compensation and owed playtime. #Entitlement

I sure hope MWM are paying attention to this. The complications of a F2P funding stream with an auction/market are probably hard to anticipate until the mistakes are made. And something like this this is going to be what CoT will have to wade through.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I know there was talk around these forums about numbers of people in an instance, with some people dooming down to under 100, so I took note that one of the things they did with this patch was to reduce the numbers of people that can be in the starting instances.

Not that we know how many will be able to be in an instance yet, what with pets and stuff, but keeping lag under control is a real need, especially in areas where new players (or a lot of players) tend to be.

Nope. Too twitchy for me. I know it's a simple interface for most of you young folks, but definitely not my cup of tea. I have never been comfortable with WASD movement. Not enough fine motor control in my left hand. To then combine that with reticle targeting and Shift+ dodging. Nope. Not in this lifetime.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy it. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll actually manage to complete the tutorial...

On the plus side, it runs smoothly on my ASUS Zenbook, which is quite an achievement for the development team. A well-made game designed for a much younger player.

Yeah, I wish I could just maybe disable it forward. I don't mind the double-tap as it's sort of a thing in many games, and I find the Shift-WASD to be a bit awkward for my fingers.
I do need to figure out a scheme, though - the controls are a bit different than other games in a few respects and it messes me up when I go play something else.

I changed the keybind to my middle mouse button. My mouse trackwheel can be depressed, serving as the middle mouse button. That way I don't have to do any gymnastics with my left hand, I just continue to move in the direction I want and when I want to dodge, I just hit that mouse button and I dodge. No big thing.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I' m downloading the game :)
Never played it but have had many good feedbacks on it.

As a casual french player, i may not really be available but i will be happy to play with you guys :) I don't know yet what will be my character name but i'll do a Dragon to be as the same area as you ^^
(i'll update this message with more precises informations)

Imho the questing in SW is good only to learn quest design but it should be done by somebody that actually thinks about fun too and not just immersion. To be clear, it's a game that makes you look via Google the solution of all the quests, or either you should lose several minutes "thinking" like you should solve a real investigation case.

I understand the boredom that can come from just following an arrow pointing the solution/location of the quest, but Secret World went too much on the other side, taking away the fun and putting in the "Search through google each quest, alt tab is your friend", that's unacceptable. The devs should find a point where you should not follow an arrow but still it must be easy enough that you should never think to lose time alt-tabbing the game = less immersion.

The same balance the devs should find with enemies difficulty, where you must find it not too difficult nor too easy.

Secret World in my opinion = bad melee animations, tedious questing, immersion broken by the continuous need to search the quests solution. This is the reason it failed imho and it should.

I understand the boredom that can come from just following an arrow pointing the solution/location of the quest, but Secret World went too much on the other side, taking away the fun and putting in the "Search through google each quest, alt tab is your friend", that's unacceptable.

I suppose that's the niche of The Secret World. I find that kind of investigation phenomenal! Just this afternoon I was playing the radio message over and over to make sure I got the morse core correct and then figuring out what it said.

I like the fake websites they made for the in-game corporations like http://www.orochi-group.com so I can find out the name of an NPC employee's wife to hack into his laptop.

I like looking for the sheet music to a song so I can figure out what notes to play to open the next door in the labyrinth.

But then, I suppose people who like these kinds of things are the intended target market for this game, and the people who don't are not.

When TSW first started they had an in-game browser you could use to do your searching. Now it doesn't work for me and I have to alt-tab like you said. But that really doesn't change the experience for me much at all.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I' m downloading the game :)
Never played it but have had many good feedbacks on it.
As a casual french player, i may not really be available but i will be happy to play with you guys :) I don't know yet what will be my character name but i'll do a Dragon to be as the same area as you ^^
(Update : My nickname is TitansCity ^^)

I found myself making the same investigatory mistakes I make the first time in TSW, such as during The Kingsmouth Code investigation mission, which made me literally laugh out loud. You'd think that I would have remembered the first time, considering how much stuff I have remembered already. A lot of my fondness of SWL stems from my nostalgia of TSW and playing with friends and family, but I am legitimately enjoying playing through Kingsmouth and the Savage Coast and the rest of Solomon Island again. And since I'm not terribly far from completing my build (in terms of skills and abilities, not gear obviously), I think some of my interest will dwindle since I gain a lot of satisfaction from working towards a goal (such as a build), moreso than actually completing it. But that has it's own merits, obviously.

There are some early detractors about the game that bother me, mostly in that they (over-)simplified the combat and skill/ability system, the gutting of the crafting system, and their monetization implementation. Sure, it's not as draconian as EA's model in SWTOR, but not by much. And their use of lockboxes re-affirms my dislike of them, and yet instills me with confidence that MWM made the correct decision concerning them. Additionally, I wasn't a fan of how cooldowns on dungeons worked in TSW, and I haven't got into dungeons as of yet in SWL. I did try to queue up for Polaris today but it said that I was too high level for it (lvl 22 currently), so it seems like they don't have a queue option for scaling down a player in level if they want to run a lower level dungeon. I also tried to enter the dungeon solo without success. I haven't tried making a pre-made team and going into the dungeon, but I suspect that my results will be the same. And if that's the case, I find that to be poorly designed. I don't remember this being the case with TSW, but I could be mistaken. I get that they probably don't want people going in at super high levels and burning down the content, but there should be some method of exemplaring down (to use a CoH/V term) to run the dungeon.

I ran into the same problem with Polaris. What you do is create a private team of just yourself, and then you can enter it and solo it. At lvl 22, you shouldn't have a problem.

I think they made levelling too easy so far. I am way overlevel for the zones I am in, just like you.

I also am with you that striving for the right mix of abilities and passives is a primary motivation. You will probably feel the same as I when they announced in their twitch stream today that they are going to double the AP and SP awards!.. In my opinion, that is a bad choice. Maybe I still have the subscription mindset, and not the F2P mindset, but I think that pace of awards is too much.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

(Um... "faring", from "to fare", not "fairing" which is a type of decoration or embellishment. Sorry, the grammar nazi in me just couldn't let it alone.)

I get tired of spinning the mouse around to target enemies. It makes my wrist ache. And the Q-1-2-E hotkey sequence, while a godsend for WASD fans, drives me absolutely nuts.

On the plus side, the character skill progression system is interesting, at least at these lower levels. And the one thing I am genuinely enjoying is I spend as much time reading lore and listening to NPCs tell their stories as I do in combat. It is, indeed, the most fully fleshed out MMORPG I have yet encountered in terms of lore and characters. Not much character development in NPCs, but still far more than most games offer. The life-cycle of the enemies is also interesting. Most game developers never bother giving the enemies a reason for existing, but by having Broodwitches converting Drowned Mariners into Incubators into Pods, into the draug with clubs for hands, the game creates the impression of an enemy group with a genuine biological drive to reproduce and thrive. The population of Kingmouth are more than just "food" or random NPCs needing divine intervention; they're collateral damage in another's species struggle to survive.

Of course, at this point (level 8) I'm still in what is more or less the third stage of the tutorial, but if the paradigm continues it should be an entertaining experience.

I ran into the same problem with Polaris. What you do is create a private team of just yourself, and then you can enter it and solo it. At lvl 22, you shouldn't have a problem.

If I'm solo, aren't I already on a private team of just myself? I'm not sure how to accomplish what you mentioned above. As previously stated, I attempted to enter the mission solo and it wouldn't allow it.

Huckleberry wrote:
I ran into the same problem with Polaris. What you do is create a private team of just yourself, and then you can enter it and solo it. At lvl 22, you shouldn't have a problem.
If I'm solo, aren't I already on a private team of just myself? I'm not sure how to accomplish what you mentioned above. As previously stated, I attempted to enter the mission solo and it wouldn't allow it.

When you click on the helicopter and open the dungeons interface, in the bottom right, there should be a button that you can click that says something like "form a private party" or some such, I can't recall exactly. Once you do that, the Polaris instance becomes clickable.

Greyhawk wrote:

I get tired of spinning the mouse around to target enemies. It makes my wrist ache. And the Q-1-2-E hotkey sequence, while a godsend for WASD fans, drives me absolutely nuts.

Keybinds are your friend, old man. Change the keys into something you prefer. In the "Settings" menu, pick "controls" and then change the keybinds to be whatever you want.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:
I ran into the same problem with Polaris. What you do is create a private team of just yourself, and then you can enter it and solo it. At lvl 22, you shouldn't have a problem.
If I'm solo, aren't I already on a private team of just myself? I'm not sure how to accomplish what you mentioned above. As previously stated, I attempted to enter the mission solo and it wouldn't allow it.
When you click on the helicopter and open the dungeons interface, in the bottom right, there should be a button that you can click that says something like "form a private party" or some such, I can't recall exactly. Once you do that, the Polaris instance becomes clickable.

@CobalAzurean, I read your post and I'm going to talk about it in this forum since I think there's value in discussing the role of randomness in combat.

About half the weapons in SWL have a random chance to provide a special effect:

Pistols have the slot machine effect with every use of an ability such that two reds is the jackpot, two blues is a big win and two whites is a small win.

Shotgun reloads a random shell type every time you reload, with more situationally favorable chances depending upon the number of shotgun skills you have in your ability bars.

Chaos will advance the powerbar for every attack that can have its damage divided by eight (8) how weird is that? ...and when the powerbar is full the actual chaos effect triggers randomly from one of three possible effects

Rifle attacks have a chance to make a grenade attack available, but you actually have to have a grenade ability slotted for it to mean anything. And if you do, the grenade will explode in the barrell if you don't use it within six (6) seconds.

Blade builds chi randomly (50% probably per ability use), but you actually need to have the spirit blade ability slotted to do anything with it. And while chi does not decay, if it is maxed out it will be converted into a heal over time and start over at zero (0) if you do not activate the spirit blade within 5 seconds.

In this regard, I find Blade and Rifle seem to be similar in that the build-up is random, and a skill has to be slotted to make use of the buildup and if that skill is not used, the effect expires and you have to start over. Although I find rifle's straight up percentage to proc results in it proccing far more often than the 5 chi it requires to build for the spirit blade. On the other hand, you can keep the spirit blade buff proc'd indefinitely so long as you keep building chi.

Casting 1 ability per 0.5 second, with a 33% chance to trigger a grenade for rifle means that, on average, you can get a grenade every one and a half (1.5) seconds.

Casting 1 ability per 0.5 second with a 50% chance to generate 1 chi means that, on average, it would take you five (5) seconds to call spirit blade and because the least favorable chi-maintenance conversion rate is 0.5 seconds per chi generated, it can, on average, be maintained indefinitely.

Comparing these two results in strength/weakness based upon your playstyle. Would you rather have a quicker access to your powerful ability that can be used once, or a longer access to a buff that can be maintained for all your abilities indefinitely?

As far as the other weapons are concerned, Fist weapons build primal wrath, Elementalism generates heat, Blood Magic builds corruption or martyrdom, and Hammer builds rage all by known amounts according to the abilities you use; so there's really no randomness going on there.

There is already a thread or two about randomness in games. But what do you think we can learn from this as it applies to City of Titans?

Do you like the idea of random effects proc'ing to give you an extra boost every once in a while?

I can tell you how most of the player bases of the games that have instituted randomness like this have responded: Negatively.

Most playerbases I have experienced have voted down randomness in favor of the assurance of known results. The reason is pretty simple. If the results vary greatly, then your successes and failures are really not your own but have to be attributed to the RNG gods. If the results don't matter very much, why make them random at all. So there's really no win-win to be achieved here.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Oh yeah, I will almost always lean in favor of a small(er) and constant or consistent benefit over a chance for beefier something. I'm basically Brute > Scrapper.

It's really my biggest issue with the combat/skill system, as compared to TSW which definitely was more involved in terms of having a truly solid build. Sure, you could pick a pre-made deck and just ahead, and it will perform moderately well, but if you wanted the most bang for your buck with highly specialized build/gear optimization, you'd definitely put some time in (e.g. grind out some SP/AP), unlock multiple weapons and stack those passives. That was some good sh*t right there, and that's how I feel it should be. The synergy that you could build around, such as Affliction/Penetration with Blade/Shotgun, is one of the reasons why I picked Sb/Sg this go-around, hoping for the same sort of cohesion.I've been less than satisfied and apparently I'm not the only one. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm (or we're) right, but if the internet and game development has taught me anything, it's that if enough people complain for long enough, something will change. Not necessarily for the better, but something will happen.

I don't mind random proc effects (as CoH had), but I couldn't tolerate them as unavoidable, core gameplay mechanics. I'd have no objection to packaging randomness into a few specific powersets (e.g. "Chaos Theory" defense, "Quantum Randomizer" buff/debuff) designed around such a concept.

After trying a Hammer/Blade character (and being a first-time player of SWL), I've concluded that the randomness issue isn't restricted to Blade and the others with clearly random elements. Even though the non-random weapons are more predictable, they still contain elements of randomness that nag, mostly due to the fact that they can have their respective "power-up meters" in a different position at the start of each fight. If the meters merely provided some modest scaling damage or defensive boosts, fine...Momentum and rage in CoH worked very well IMO. But not in SWL...the damage boosts are large, and some powers taken mostly for their side effects (such as healing) can be totally dependent on whether the powered-up mode is on. Therefore, any tactic or power rotation that depends on being in or out of powered-up mode means either spamming builder powers to trigger that mode, or glancing down before each fight to check your status then implement an optimal power rotation to reach the desired mode.

Combined with so few tray slots for powers, powers on cooldown and situational powers (like AoEs or a distance-closing ability) feel very expensive to slot and make me too mindful of how few options I have to shift the combat in a different direction.

This leads to a lot more tray-watching and meter-watching than I desire. I want to be immersed in the combat - not feel like I'm being asked to (hyperbolically) type UDP packets for the client to pass to the server. CoH allowed us to get a feel for a powerset, getting comfortable with certain attack patterns but freely respond to shifting combat with multiple types of powers (boost offenses / active defenses / crowd control / repositioning / etc).

This leads to a lot more tray-watching and meter-watching than I desire.

That's a good point.

I have to agree with you that the UI elements for these effects do draw our attention in an undesirably distracting way.

Funcom has said that they want the UI modders to go to town on it, and maybe someone will figure out a better way.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

There may be some concepts where variable effects are quite fitting and would make more sense than a single type of thing occurring each time, but then again there are going to be some builds that could come to rely on a certain type of thing happening for sure each time it fired.

Guys I just started playing Secret World again yesterday and I have to say, im not having too much fun. They changed the powers from last time I played it. I chose elemental and now they have this weird gauge for when you get too hot and too cold? Wth...

I also don't like how closed the streets are in London, I feel like it needs a place like Atlas Park where people can hang out, not just running through narrow streets by myself. I cant even fly over the buildings to look around.

Guys I just started playing Secret World again yesterday and I have to say, im not having too much fun. They changed the powers from last time I played it. I chose elemental and now they have this weird gauge for when you get too hot and too cold? Wth...
I also don't like how closed the streets are in London, I feel like it needs a place like Atlas Park where people can hang out, not just running through narrow streets by myself. I cant even fly over the buildings to look around.

To appeal to the shooter fans, TSW relaunched under SWL as an "action-RPG", so each weapon now has a gimmick or mechanic as a resource to manage in addition to the energy that the weapons use per power. Not at weapons are created equal nor are all mechanics as viable. I preferred the old system in TSW (despite all weapons being a series of building and spender abilities), but I don't dislike the changes enough not to give it another go, especially considering how much I enjoy the setting and content.
I've been chipping away at the gear grind since hitting 50 and finishing the content in all three zones. I'm currently at item power 136, which for a F2P player, isn't half bad for the time I've committed to it. The next event, The Whispering Tide, starts August 1st. The Steam Launch is happening July 31st which could determine how successful ultimately SWL is.

I think its too much. I never really liked shooters. I think the only one I enjoyed was call of duty zombies. And the fact that it's kind of choosing my powers for me, I have an electric, fire, and ice ability. When I made my first character in TSW it was all electric and I think blood. Are your old characters gone now? I couldn't find my old one when I logged in. I might try it out a bit more tonight.

I think its too much. I never really liked shooters. I think the only one I enjoyed was call of duty zombies. And the fact that it's kind of choosing my powers for me, I have an electric, fire, and ice ability. When I made my first character in TSW it was all electric and I think blood. Are your old characters gone now? I couldn't find my old one when I logged in. I might try it out a bit more tonight.

If you go to their Reddit, there are posts about transferring your vanity items and such from TSW. It's a new game, so you can't just log in with your old character at max level. You need to, along with everyone else, play the game again and learn the mechanics/gimmicks as the skill/ability system is quite different.